US Internet providers start spy program to stop file-sharing

Starting this week, Internet Service Providers will start throttling connection speeds for customers alleged to be pirating copyright-protected materials.

Months after a controversial “six-strike” program was slated to
be rolled out by the biggest ISPs in the United States, the
Copyright Alert System (CAS) confirmed on Monday that the
initiative has gone live.

The program, critiqued by Internet freedom activists and privacy
advocates alike, will let ISPs take six steps of escalating
severity in handling incidents where customers are believed to be
illegally sharing material. Through the “graduate response”
approach, suspected copyright criminals could be issued a series of
warnings for illegally downloading protected content.

With the first strike caught by the CAS, a customer could be
issued a warning. As strikes increase, however, “mitigation
measures,” connection speed throttling and termination of service
are all possible options.

“Practically speaking, this means our content partners will
begin sending notices of alleged P2P [peer-to-peer] copyright
infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those
notices in the form of Copyright Alerts to consumers,” Jill
Lesser of the Center for Copyright Information rights in a blog
post on Monday.

“Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted
content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will
receive Alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and
direct them to legal alternatives. And for those consumers who
believe they received Alerts in error, an easy to use process will
be in place for them to seek independent review of the Alerts they
received,” she adds — neglecting to mention that the appeals
process costs customers $35 a pop.

Previously, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision
Systems and other ISPs have signed onto the program, which was last
scheduled to start in July 2012. Gigi Sohn, president of digital
rights group Public Knowledge, told Wired last year that originally
ISPs hoped to roll out the program earlier, but major protests
against other restrictive Web policies, including attempts to pass
certain legislation, left them to wait until the dust settled.

“SOPA and PIPA definitely had an impact. There was some
concern, if they moved ahead too quickly, public opinion would be
so raw, this would be caught in the whirlwind of bad PR,” Sohn
told Wired.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that the official CSI
six-strikes website lets users learn more about the history of
copyright, but does so by re-directing them to a page managed by
the Copyright Alliance — the same group that advocated heavily for
last year’s failed Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

When the six-strikes program was first introduced, the White
House issued an official statement saying it should “have a
significant impact on reducing online piracy.”